


won't recover in a heartbeat

by casualbird



Series: ukai gets wrecked [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blindfolds, Explicit Consent, First Time Bottoming, Fluff and Smut, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Praise Kink, careful this one'll rot your teeth, for a certain definition of bottoming anyway, how is body positivity not a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:35:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: It makes him shake, the thought of opening, of yielding, letting go.Of being cared for, letting someone take his whole world in their hands. Of that someone beingIttetsu.
Relationships: Takeda Ittetsu/Ukai Keishin
Series: ukai gets wrecked [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003683
Comments: 8
Kudos: 113





	won't recover in a heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dearest darlingest danny](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dearest+darlingest+danny).



> hi hi!! i hope you enjoy this!

Ittetsu holds him like that the whole movie through--snuggled sidewise on the couch, Keishin nestled safe between his thighs. Even when the song over the credits ends, even as the licensing and legalese flits across the screen, he holds him, stroking his shoulders and his collarbones in turn.

He likes to watch the credits, he says when Keishin asks. Likes to look in the eyes of every artist on a film he loves, to know everyone responsible for one he hates.

“I also just like lying here with you,” he adds, after a soft-smiling moment.

The DVD player rolls back over to the menu, but for the first three cycles of the music they don’t pay it any mind. Ittetsu crinkles his brow and flicks it off eventually, but even this isn’t enough a call to motion.

They lay together, fingers tangled, ear to heartbeat. Ittetsu murmurs something gentle against the crown of Keishin’s head, but if he gets hair in his mouth, there’s no indication that he minds.

The only light in the room is the squinting beacon of the DVD player’s clock, reading nine-thirty. _Huh,_ thinks Keishin, because for all the world it could have been past midnight. The days are too short, now, and they freeze him rigid while he’s working in the field.

That could all be on another planet, a whole other _plane_ here and now. Warm, well-fed and well-tended, with an empty teapot on the coffee table, his head laid against the chest of the man he loves.

 _Fuck,_ mumbles Keishin, because it’s a lot.

“Oh--by the by, dear, did you still want to?” purrs Ittetsu, all hushed-bright like budding leaves. “But if you’re tired, Keishin, we can just go to bed.”

Keishin weighs it--a night spent curled in Ittetsu’s arms, under his fancy duvet… Or that same thing, but after what promises to be a stellar fifteen minutes.

He really is quite comfortable.

He thinks of all the things Ittetsu’s been whispering in his ear, though, and about the fascinating process he’s had to undertake to prepare for this, which he has _no_ desire to repeat the following day, but in the end it’s just--it’s just that…

That he _wants_ to, and that he won’t nod off, and that even if he does, well, _it’s Ittetsu._ It’ll be fine.

“Fuck,” he says again, all warm and gruff, decisive.

Ittetsu giggles, cranes to lay a little kiss on his forehead. “I’m glad,” he murmurs, and if there wasn’t any hair in his mouth before, there definitely is now. Still he doesn’t mind it, and Keishin is put in mind of the canyon of experience between them, and shivers.

 _I won’t deny the appeal,_ Ittetsu had said, once, _of getting to be the one who shows you._ In the weeks since, Keishin has scarcely thought of anything else.

 _Show me,_ he almost says, but then Ittetsu is up, pixie-quick, folding up their blanket and draping it over the back of the couch, and all Keishin can think of is how _cute_ it is, that tidiness.

He does get to say that, and Ittetsu laughs like a little wellspring as he catches him up by the hand, makes breezy for the bedroom.

“Don’t trip,” mumbles Keishin, “I have no idea where your glasses are.”

Ittetsu doesn’t stop laughing--but he does stop _walking,_ swivelling back to plant a tiny kiss on Keishin’s cheek. “I’ve gotten very good at being blind,” he says, as if this is something imminently quantifiable. “Maybe you will too, hm? We’ll see.”

Keishin shuts up, then. His face blazes and his throat ties itself in a bow.

It doesn’t get better when the bedroom lamp flips on, when he sees the bathtowel that’s already draped over the bed. The water bottles on the desk, the stack of erotica on the nightstand and the coil of sky-blue cord that sits atop it.

Ittetsu fixes him with a kiss and a smile. There’s no telling whether it’s a remedy or just more fuel on the fire of his flusterment, but it feels nice nonetheless. Ittetsu is the kind of person who doesn’t lose chapsticks, and thin as they are his lips are soft.

“Time to undress?” he wonders, all airy as if there are genuinely no stakes. And there aren’t, there won’t be, not with him.

Keishin nods, and the answering grin comes over him like a sunshower, abrupt and brief and beautiful. Short fingers curl in the hem of his sweatshirt, tugging up, and on his nod they lift the thing wholesale over his head, jostling his nose and his hair and his undershirt. Ittetsu folds it, drapes it over the back of his desk chair, kisses the crinkled space between Keishin’s brows.

“Damn you’re cute,” huffs Keishin again, because it’s the only thought he’s been able to entertain for _several_ months. It’s another long moment before Ittetsu can stop kissing him long enough to take his t-shirt off, strum gently across his ribcage.

Ittetsu hems, a second, as his palms come to rest on the crests of Keishin’s softening hips, as he draws him in even closer. “Would it hurt your pride if I said you were cute as well?”

It probably _should,_ but wonder of wonders, it doesn’t--just makes Keishin all blurry-edged and fumbly and warm. He laughs, mouths at Ittetsu’s ear to hide that he hasn’t a thing to say to it.

Hasn’t a thing to say to how he _likes_ it.

He hurries up undressing--to avoid questioning it, and because Ittetsu seats himself primly at the edge of the bed, gently patting the space where he’s supposed to lie and Keishin wants it, wants dreadfully to do as he’s bidden. He kicks the puddle of his jeans and underwear under the bed and out of mind, and clambers shaking up onto the mattress.

Ittetsu stops him halfway through, with an expression whose gentility does nothing to diminish its authority. Writer’s-callused fingers reach for his unshaven jaw, and if it’s an appraisal, Ittetsu is pleased. He draws him in, kisses him softly, sends him on his way.

“Is it too cold?” he asks, once Keishin is laid out for him, sprawled easy on his front. He can’t see with his face in the pillow, but he can just tell from the sound of that voice that Ittetsu’s brows are knitting, that he’s worrying the cuffs of his sweatshirt between little fingers.

“Nah,” he says, and then “really,” because from the tone of his silence Ittetsu doesn’t quite believe him. But really. It is fine--the thermostat at Ittetsu’s place actually _works,_ wonder of wonders, and the room is a temperature Ittetsu might call ‘toasty.’

One of those hands lights between his shoulder blades, and all in a rush it’s much warmer.

“Good,” murmurs Ittetsu, as fingers weave between the knots of his vertebrae, of tight muscles, ending in a tiny spiral at the small of his back. A gentling motion, testing. “Are you ready?”

He nods, and then remembers the lecture he’s been given, time and again, on verbally-expressed consent.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, and Ittetsu croons to him, kisses his spine before reaching for the nightstand.

When he turns to take the blindfold, the last thing he sees are Ittetsu’s careful fingers, his still-more-delicate smile. The image suffuses him, stays in him long after the light leaves his retinas, while he settles in to this warm dark.

He twitches, a little, when Ittetsu’s fingers brush his wrist.

“Do you need a minute?” His voice is feather-soft and just as strong, down over something surer. It’s a new-familiar tone, as comforting as the blend of tea Ittetsu keeps in the staff room.

Keishin does take a moment, though, because as gentle, as steady as Ittetsu is, being blindfolded is still kind of weird as hell. With time, though, he finds a sort of equilibrium--though it fumbles, though it tethers itself inexorably to the touch of careful hands.

Ittetsu pets him, and Keishin can _hear_ that smile in the little huffs of his breath, can feel it in the way they’re listing close together.

“We can skip the rope,” Ittetsu murmurs, “if you’d prefer. Though you’d still have to be good, and let me fuss over you a little.”

 _Be good--_ the words thrum, honeyed and heavy. Oh, does Keishin want to be good. And what a thing that is--that it’s something he _can_ want, here.

He holds his wrists above his head, obediently crossed.

“Here,” he says, barely voiced. “Go on.”

Ittetsu does, catching him up in a single, elegant knot. Keishin had held the cord in his hands, while they spoke about this, and it’s just as silky now as then--the kind of gentleness that makes him marvel, makes him wonder if it really ought to be for him.

It’s a proprietary softness, one that belongs entirely to Ittetsu, and he’s just--wonder of wonders--allowed to soak in it, sometimes. It makes him shiver, makes him sigh.

“Does that feel alright?” Ittetsu’s tone is just laced, just dusted with sternness, real concern. Two fingers slip between rope and wrist, checking for comfort, circulation. He seems satisfied with this, with Keishin’s affirming mumble. “Oh, don’t you look lovely?” he coos, and the flats of his palms stroke down Keishin’s back, gossamer-gentle.

“Can’t tell,” says Keishin, and Ittetsu laughs like morning sunshine, fingers curling.

For a little while, that’s all it is. Keishin takes his first steps into this space on Ittetsu’s arm, half-wobbling. It’s strange, but not in a bad way, and as Ittetsu hums to him, rubs the knots out of his back, he thinks it’s the sort of thing he could fall into if he’s not careful.

He doesn’t want to be careful.

Ittetsu has quite evidently read about the business of giving massages somewhere--his fingers are firm, fluid, inviting a slackness that Keishin hadn’t known he was missing.

“Sometimes,” he says, and it’s almost conversational, as if they’re just having tea, as if they’ve gone for a drink after practice. “Sometimes, I wake up early, and I lie here and watch the sun rise and I think of you picking your soybeans. And I think, wow, that can’t be fair.”

He trails off a second, gentling over a tremor.

“I think about how much I’d like to have you here, so I can spoil you.”

Keishin’s first impulse is to huff a laugh, to exhale _naaah,_ to be the guy who doesn’t mind it. And he doesn’t, not really, but--

\--the thought of it, of being _kept_ like that, it sends the littlest of thrills through him. Muted, like the lay of Ittetsu’s hands, the seaglass blue of his duvet.

Spoiled is never something he’s been, but it can’t be worse for him than smoking. He laughs to himself, shifts just slightly under those hands.

“Yes?”

“‘S nothing,” he says, when he can muster up his voice. Ittetsu is taking him somewhere slow, syrupy, strange and sweetly welcoming. “Y’re fine.”

He can feel, in the shift of those wrists, that Ittetsu is nodding. “If you’re sure,” he murmurs, and carries on.

There’s no way Keishin could possibly estimate the time, if not for the slow release of muscle, the progressing sheepish boldness of the touch.

It comes to be less of a _massage,_ after a while, though the purpose in Ittetsu’s movements doesn’t fade. He draws his fingers, his palms, the heels of his hands slow over plush-covered obliques, the stretch marks on Keishin’s back and thighs.

Ittetsu knows the backburner agony of Keishin’s weight, of the way that things like _age_ and _trying-to-quit snacks_ make him something an athlete, a coach oughtn’t be.

Well, that’s subjective. Except it isn’t really, not to Ittetsu. Ittetsu thinks he’s got the right of it, all quiet praises and easy touches and muttering ‘beautiful, beautiful.’

Here, in this enfolding darkness where Ittetsu’s hands and bed and voice are all the only things to be felt… maybe, for a moment, Keishin can be convinced.

He always does come around in the end, and it--it’s good. Good, to be _yielding_ for once.

Under Ittetsu’s touch, he slackens, shifting. There is a sound, low and satisfied and terribly uncool, and on its heels comes Ittetsu’s little laugh.

“Do you like it?” he asks, in a tone like flannel sheets. It’s laced with soft concern, as if Ittetsu doesn’t know that he’s the greatest boyfriend, the greatest top on earth.

“Mmngph,” says Keishin, which is not an answer; and “yeah, oh please--” which is.

He doesn’t have to look to know the smile on Ittetsu’s face, all calm and astonished at once. He thinks of the crinkle that must be in his brow and his hands twitch, half-reaching out to pet it.

Ittetsu just ruffles his hair, reminds him what they’re playing at. Pauses for a second, then plucks his hairband out, runs firm fingertips across his scalp.

Surely, Keishin can’t be faulted for the sound he makes at that, breathless and low.

“Do you want to keep going, Keishin?”

He thought he’d already made that _quite_ clear, but--oh, there’s no use grumbling, not when the promise of _the next step_ coalesces in his mind.

“Yeah,” he mumbles again, and earns a little pinch on the backside. Just teasing, just a little.

“Good. Now, just--” and there is a shifting, because despite Ittetsu’s considerable powers, not everything can be perfectly planned, and there’s a moment of fumbling around for the lube.

“--turn over for me, won’t you?”

Keishin groans, the kind of sound that begs for _five more minutes._ There is a quiet shuffling, though, which might be Ittetsu shaking his head, and then a kiss lands on his shoulder. It’s open, wide-mouthed, warm, and it _shakes_ him.

“What am I going to do with you?” he whispers, lips dragging gentle over skin. There’s not a whit of heat in it--absently, Keishin laughs.

“Whatever you damn well please.” His voice catches up in his throat, comes out rasping.

Ittetsu is laughing, warm breath lapping at his back. “Not _anything,”_ he amends, with a tilt that makes Keishin shiver. What more could there be? Where are these places, that Ittetsu thinks he might not like to go?

 _Show me,_ he thinks, and moves to roll onto his back, _show me showmeshowme._

And then Ittetsu lies along the line of him, sweatshirt soft against bare skin, and that voice is nuzzling at his ear--”oh, there you go…!”

A moment of hesitation, as if he’s not quite sure, but it tumbles out the same as any of his exhortations, _“good boy.”_

Keishin can feel himself twitching, muscles hitching where smooth palms soothe him over, down his belly to the crest of his hip. Under the blindfold, his eyes turn wide.

Ittetsu jerks, second-guessing. “W-was that okay? Sorry, I--is it weird?”

“Yeah,” he manages, tight-throated. “But I, uh. I don’t love you because you’re not weird.”

He softens a little, loosing a trapped breath. “Mind your double negatives, Keishin.”

A sigh, long-suffering and absolutely false. “I love you because you’re weird,” says Keishin, and “and if you tell anyone I’ll kick your ass but I liked it.”

Ittetsu is squawking something about how he would _never,_ and Keishin just laughs because he knows, he knows.

Because it was weird, and he loved it, even though it’s the sort of thing you’d say to a dog.

 _Woof,_ thinks Keishin.

And perhaps he said all that out loud, because in the next breath Ittetsu’s arms are gathering him up around the middle, hauling him in for kisses that fall like confetti on his cheek, his ear, his jaw. His neck, and that’s when they slow, when Ittetsu catches up the thread again, and offers it back, and Keishin takes it like it’s mooring him to shore.

He’ll have marks in the morning, and he’ll secret them away under his collar, brush them with absent fingertips while he smokes.

The thought of it makes him shiver, makes him twist and huff into Ittetsu’s hair. Makes him impatient, testing at his bonds until Ittetsu soothes him with careful-cadenced whispers, a small hand spread over his solarplexus.

“More?”

“Hell yes,” Keishin hisses, and Ittetsu giggles, lays a peck on his temple through the blindfold, reminds him to _behave._

He does, or tries to, lying as still as he can while that hand trails down his abdomen, down to his hip, the place where it meets his rounding thigh. Ittetsu makes him wait a little, just petting, tracing his Adonis belt, just because he can. Just because he knows Keishin will let him, no matter how he squirms with it. No matter how he grumbles, how his cock twitches every time careful fingertips edge just a little closer.

He’d already felt helpless, like some new-made thing--but it’s worse, it’s better when one finger draws up the length of his cock, when Ittetsu croons so softly in his ear.

“Do you like that?”

For a second, all that exists are the warmth of Ittetsu’s breath, the safe press of his body, the slow touch of his hand--but it won’t go on without his say-so, so he marshals himself, mumbles something half-gone and hopelessly assenting.

“Good,” he says, and the smile is _audible._ Keishin feels it, adores it, shudders. “You’re just precious like this, Keishin, I hope you know…”

There is a needling something at the back of Keishin’s mind that tells him ‘precious’ isn’t a thing he ought to be. He tells it to shut the hell up, Ittetsu isn’t finished talking.

“Goodness, I just want to take care of you. Will you let me? Just how we talked about.“

His voice is a featherlight purr, and Keishin is just as struck by the concept of it as he was the first time Ittetsu brought it up, even though he’s heard it half a dozen times. Even after the misadventure in the bathroom, even after he’s been near about living it for the past handful of minutes. It makes him shake, the thought of opening, of yielding, letting go.

Of being cared for, letting someone take his whole world in their hands. Of that someone being _Ittetsu._

“Bring it,” he rumbles, to avoid sounding sappy. He does anyway, and Ittetsu huffs laughter, kissing his jaw.

He moves, then, drawing up and away and Keishin’s fingers can’t help but twitch, his throat can’t help but catch on some little misshapen protest. The hell does he think he’s going?

“Not far,” he murmurs, “just a second,” and it’s true, he’s just--shiftting down, a little, aligning his hips with Keishin’s, cheek nuzzling against his bare breast. His hair teases at Keishin’s chin, a little, but it’s more than made up for by the clean-herb smell of it, mingling with the cradling scent of warm bodies, well-washed sheets.

One little hand coaxes his thighs open, bracing against Ittetsu’s own, in all his warmth and fleecy polyester. Keishin shifts, steadies himself, wonders how it could possibly make him feel so freshly _naked_ when he’d gotten all his clothes off long ago.

He doesn’t wonder anything, though, when Ittetsu’s fingers trace the arc of his inner thigh, when blunt nails graze thin skin. When Ittetsu murmurs to him, tells him in the most certain of terms how he’s beautiful.

He’s never going to get over being called that, not ever. It makes him ring like a struck bell, makes him want. He bucks, a little, as Ittetsu’s fingers reach his perineum, as his cuff brushes the curve of his balls, blindingly sensitive. Keishin whines and isn’t sure whether it’s from the fabric or his fingertips, laying on an easy pressure that makes it feel as if Ittetsu’s touching him inside already.

It’d been a worry, in the past week, that he’d come to this point and--clam up. That it’d be _too weird,_ that despite everything he wouldn’t be able to bury the forbiddance. 

Now, though--there are _no words_ for how dearly Keishin wants it. 

“Fuck,” he mumbles, and it’s close enough.

“Good fuck or bad fuck?” Ittetsu’s hand stills, head lifting by degrees.

It always gets him, the sound of dirty words in Ittetsu’s mild mouth. He rasps a laugh, lists closer into him. “Good fuck,” he croaks, “and please, don’t make me keep talking.”

A kiss to his breastbone, nosing through the curls at his chest. “You do have to behave,” Ittetsu says, and relishes it. 

Keishin is supposed to say something here, like _I’ll try_ or _or what,_ but it doesn’t come. His voice is all caught up in himself, knotted up around the words _I want to I want to I want to._

Consent notarized in triplicate is Ittetsu’s rule, however, and Ittetsu is in the habit of getting his way.

“Go on,” he mumbles, only as rough as sanding sugar.

When next Ittetsu kisses his cheek, Keishin can feel his merciful little smile. Can hear the quiet _click-clack_ of the lube opening and shutting, the idle little tune he hums.

There is a pause, tender with the sating ache of healing muscle, fading bruise.

It takes a second to occur to Keishin that he’s warming it on his fingertips, just to make it that much easier on him. Just so he won’t flinch when touched--him, of all people! Keishin goes all to pieces with it.

He sighs through the shivering, through the shushing brush of cloth against his skin, tentative fingers at the inside of his thigh. 

Breath breaks in his throat when one slick-warm fingertip finds his perineum again, when Ittetsu stops a moment, just to tease, before one blessed curl of the wrist puts that finger up against his entrance, circling slow.

“Is this okay?”

The _yes_ pours out of him breathless, half-gasping. The sensation is languid and something like strange, but not quite… It wracks him, pitching up his hips and straightening his spine, a hindbrain shift that’s half surprise and half a plea for more.

 _“Oh,”_ whispers Ittetsu, the way he would of a pastoral poem, a little bird at his windowsill. “Look at you.”

If Keishin had anything resembling the presence of mind, he’d have said something--something in that plausibly-deniable cynic-space, something droll.

He doesn’t. He whines, instead, and nestles his nose against the crown of Ittetsu’s head. Gets a laugh in response, and for all its tenderness it resounds in him, and again he stiffens, twitching.

“Keishin… look how sweet you are, look how much you want it. Are you ready for more?”

His answer comes out muffled, hair sticking in his mouth, but neither of them pay it any mind. Ittetsu only croons to him, nuzzling his chest and slipping, just barely, inside.

It’s still weird, or something in that ballpark. He still wants it, as much as he wants Ittetsu’s head against his breast, as much as he wants the sure softness of that arm across his abdomen.

Keishin’s voice breaks like a dropped glass, skittering off in all directions. Ittetsu only cranes his neck to kiss him, whispers slow against his skin.

“Sh,” he soothes him, “shshsh, Keishin, you’re doing so well. Such a good boy,” and Keishin feels himself go taut again, feels himself _leak._

There is a little silence, one of the warmest of his life. Even without sight, he knows the way Ittetsu looks at him. He shifts ever closer to that gentle body, needs to cling even without use of his hands. Perhaps more so.

He wants to be good, and he _is,_ and Ittetsu purrs, presses just a little further in. “Relax,” he says, in a tone soft as cottonwool that won’t take no. “Bear down a little, Keishin, there you go, it’ll be easier.”

Ittetsu’s head tilts, delivering another little kiss to Keishin’s chest. His finger curls, and it’s ridiculous but for an instant Keishin swears he can feel the rise of his writer’s bump, dragging inside and there’s nothing for it but to cry out, chest-deep and quavering. Then, in the half-breath after that, there’s _more--_ just the littlest brush of a small fingertip but it’s so much, it’s everything he feels, like staring straight into the rising sun.

“Holy fuck,” he rasps, his voice a scraped-out shell. He’d known, of course, that such a thing could happen, that given Ittetsu’s _astonishing_ experience it well might, but--there was no preparing for it, no real estimation of the hype. He shakes.

“Are you...magic or somethin’?”

“Hm, no. But I’ve read a lot of books,” he says, far too conversationally for the way he’s touching him. And then too sheepishly--”and perhaps had a little practice.”

Keishin hitches--that’s always the thing that gets him. That he’s been out there, seeing things and trying them out, all the world’s fine fol-de-rol, and still he wants to be _here._ Here, with him, holding him so gently.

He whimpers, then, and Ittetsu kisses the dusky space around his nipple, asks him hushed if he’s well.

“Good fuck,” he says again, for lack of any other words. Ittetsu must be pleased--his fingertip twitches, cants in firmer, and suddenly there’s no point to the blindfold anymore because Keishin wouldn’t have been able to open his eyes anymore if he’d wanted to.

Only, there is--because it still lies soft and stern across his face, the same tethering as the cord around his wrists, Ittetsu’s body at his side.

Ittetsu’s voice against his skin--”Keishin,” he murmurs, so tenderly awed, “you’re so sweet, the way you’re _dripping_ for me, so lovely… do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”

Keishin can only cry out in response, writhing tight against him, all satin-soft and steady. Stable, with the way he laughs below his breath, keeps on with his gentle movements like they’re easy.

Keeps on with his praises; _lovely,_ he calls Keishin once again, like the word just belongs in his ear, and _dear heart, look at you, good boy._ Calls him by name, over and over with the cadence of a poem.

He doesn’t stop, doesn’t falter, just goes on touching him with all the unhurry of his heartbeat, even-keeled at Keishin’s side, and it’s--it’s so much, just the constancy of him. That he knows what he wants, that he’ll _have_ it, and that all _it_ is is for Keishin to lie loose-limbed against him, still and safe and satisfied, whatever that takes… it wracks him, makes him buck his hips and cry.

“Are you almost there?” His tone is a washcloth to a fevered brow, a kiss on the nose in the morning. Keishin’s wrists wrench at the cord, heaving with instinct to cling to him, to wrap himself up. To go under with him, _for_ him, but he already has, panting and needy and burdened by nothing at all.

With a last flex of that finger, with the incidental brush of sleeve against the root of his cock, it’s over; he spasms, sobs, spills over himself. Still Ittetsu doesn’t stop--just gentles, guides him through it, murmurs “that’s it, that’s right, there...”

Everything is suffused in that soft-warm darkness, everything is quiet save for Ittetsu’s whispering, the thrum of his own pulse in his ears. Everything is _safe,_ and while Keishin comes back to himself Ittetsu is there to hold him, to tuck him away in his arms and say gently _yes, yes, look how good you’ve been._

For a while they just lay like that, languid and easy, Ittetsu humming and Keishin catching up with his breath. Little kisses fall on his cheeks and his nose, the slackening corners of his mouth, and for a moment it’s nearly too much.

Nearly. He fumbles to kiss back, groans deep in his chest when Ittetsu’s clean hand comes up to ruffle his hair, pull sweat-slicked strands from his brow.

“How did you like that?” he asks, and Keishin only laughs, full of affection and empty of breath.

Ittetsu must smile--there’s a little pause before he speaks again, lilts “I see” as if Keishin’s said something intellectual. He loves him, Keishin thinks.

He must say it, too, because Ittetsu kisses him again as he slips Keishin’s wrists free from the cord, massages out the strain.

He goes on twittering after that, gently cheerful about _rehydrating_ and _cleanup_ and all and sundry else. Keishin scarcely follows--just wraps strong arms around his middle, nuzzles deep into his chest. He smells like laundry detergent and tea, and there is nothing else in the world besides it, besides the sensation, the scent, the soft voice in his ear.

Nothing to worry about, nowhere to be.

It’s a while, before he’s ready to crawl from that space, to leave it off-balance and blinking into artificial light, a tender flurry of fussing aftercare. Two glasses of water, a little snack he eats from Ittetsu’s hand. A kiss, and then another, and then several dozen more, sprinkled all over.

As they nestle in under the bedclothes, he thinks he’ll have to let Ittetsu show him more and more and more.

**Author's Note:**

> hallo hallo! if you've made it this far i absolutely salute you, thank you so much! i'm new to this fandom so posting is still kind of nerve-wracking for me. 
> 
> on that note i'm looking to make more haikyuu friends! so! come hang out with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles) if you like, i don't bite!
> 
> a couple points of interest: one, they were watching howl's moving castle, because it is my favorite movie and probably also takeda's and Definitely a date movie; two, i couldn't find a place to make an explicit reference to it in the text but takeda is trans as all fuck. three, the title is from dry the river's hammer, which slaps eternally
> 
> do let me know what you thought of this, i'm still a little anxious!
> 
> hope this could make you smile after what a long strange trip this week has been!


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